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Nintendo caps comeback year with Super Mario Odyssey

Hats off to Nintendo on what can only be described as a bounce back year for the Japanese gaming company.

The company launched its latest console, the Switch, in March; once again stoked nostalgia with release of the SNES Classic in September and now caps it off with Super Mario Odyssey, the latest game featuring the iconic character rescuing Princess Peach from the evil Bowser.

Super Mario Odyssey is the latest game featuring the iconic character rescuing Princess Peach from the evil Bowser.

Arriving in stores today, Super Mario Odyssey has received rave reviews as another great addition to the character’s library, with stellar level design filled with nooks and crannies, including lovely retro 2D segments as gamers search for Power Moons to advance to the next stage.

The big addition is a new character named Cappy, a sentient hat that lets Mario move in new ways but, more importantly, allows him to capture other characters, using their abilities, like a frog that lets him jump higher, or flying and smashing through things like Bullet Bill.

It is a game that only Nintendo could make, with its trademark bright colours and joyful amusements, and one of the reason the company retains its diehard fans.

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“It’s definitely been a complete change of fortune and direction, from a business perspective, for Nintendo,” said Pierre-Paul Trepanier, Nintendo Canada general manager, in an interview in Toronto earlier this week.

“We have had a lot of gaming experiences that have succeeded in the essence of making people smile. At the heart of it, it is very simple universal game mechanics that any kid or kid at heart can jump in and enjoy.”

As simple as that sounds, there are a lot of factors that have gone into the turnaround, starting with the launch of the Switch, a hybrid home/portable console that has been a critical and commercial darling compared to its predecessor, the Wii U.

One of the big knocks on that console, despite its great Nintendo-made, first-party games, was its spartan release calendar, with long gaps between games. Because it didn’t sell well, third-party game developers abandoned the platform.

In the first seven months of the Switch, the company has released Zelda: Breath of the Wild; re-released Mario Kart 8 Deluxe Edition with new content; a new fighting game, Arms, and now Super Mario Odyssey. The Switch also had older games and several indie games ported to the platform, giving it a much healthier set of games in its first year.

The release of Super Mario Odyssey adds to a good year for Nintendo. (NINTENDO OF AMERICA / TNS)

“In any universe, the launch of a new Mario is a big game. The launch of a Zelda game is an even bigger deal,” says Trepanier. “We’ve had two in a launch year, so yes, that was a strategically critical decision to build these two pillars. That momentum and demand for the platform has resulted in third parties saying ‘I’ll make some games for this, too.’”

Trepanier notes that Psyonix’s beloved Rocket League will be coming this year and Bethesda, a company that has long eschewed Nintendo platforms, will bring Skyrim to the console as well.

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The results for 2017 have been impressive, with the company selling the most consoles in September, and the company helping to contribute to 14.4 per cent year-over-year overall industry growth for the first nine months of the year.

In Canada, the Switch has been the No. 1 selling console in 2017 with 209,000 units (compared to the Sony PS4’s 205,000). In fact, in September, 73 per cent of console sales in Canada were Nintendo products, with a total 115,000 units split between the Switch, 3DS or SNES Classic.

Trepanier says that the company’s 3DS portable line remains strong; its next big release is Pokemon Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon, arriving in November.

“We were wondering what impact the Switch, which is a console you can play anywhere, would have on our portable gaming business. It turns out they are different markets,” he explains.

Nintendo has also hit lightning in a bottle with its classic line of re-released consoles. Due to shortages of last year’s NES Classic, the company shipped three times as many SNES Classics this year and has already announced that another round of NES Classics will be in stores in 2018.

Trepanier says the company heard the grumbling from frustrated consumers looking for the product but gently reminds that re-releases are not the company’s “core business.”

Of course, while it has been a good year so far it’s not over. The real competition comes during the holiday season, with several big video games being released and Microsoft launching the next version of its flagship console, the Xbox One X, on Nov. 7.

“I did see some numbers that the Switch sold 2 million in the U.S. so far, which is a great start for Nintendo, but I guess the caution that I would throw on that is that with the Xbox One X launching next month, you are going to get some depressed Xbox One sales in the third quarter because they are waiting for the new device,” said Lewis Ward, International Data Corporation’s research director of gaming and AR/VR.

“Just because you dominate third quarter, it doesn’t mean you will the fourth. In fact, our survey data implies that isn’t going to be the case.”

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